


Coming Back Down and You Really Don't Mind

by sk8rpssockpup (MissIzzy)



Series: Liaisons [5]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2009 US National Championships, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-24
Updated: 2009-01-24
Packaged: 2017-12-31 06:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1028307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/sk8rpssockpup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Galina needs some advice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Back Down and You Really Don't Mind

**Author's Note:**

> IDK, in 2009, I followed the short at men's Nationals in the Johnny's Angels chat room, then after reading the articles, a bit after midnight, too upset to sleep, I opened up WordPad and this was what came out.

Like everyone else in the figure skating community, Galina Zmievskaya knew that a lifetime's work could be destroyed in a single moment, a single jump. Yet she was still deeply dismayed when, about two hours after it happened, she discovered the hard way she might have lost a year and a half's work to a literal single axel.  
  
Well, truthfully, it hadn't just been the mistake tonight. It was also the injuries, the illnesses, the skates, the dropping presentation scores, the dropping overall scores, the disorienting upheaval the men's figure skating scene had undergone this year, the economy problems, the subsequent family financial problems, Viktor's having to be absent more while earning money so his family could more easily deal with the economy problems, and, of course, Stephane Lambiel, whom she now wished she'd never let Viktor accept as a student, especially since she'd known already that even if Johnny could deal with having a competitor around easily enough, that wasn't all Stephane was to him.   
  
Despite this, she was honestly shocked when as soon as she and Johnny got some relative privacy, in a remote corner of the arena, he suddenly whimpered, "I don't want to do this anymore."  
  
"Don't talk like that," she said hastily. "Don't think like that, or you won't be able to deliver the free skate you're going to need on Sunday."  
  
"Deliver the free skate..." He repeated her Russian with his accent even worse than usual. "How am I supposed to do that?" he cried, in English. "Look at me! And why should I even bother when they won't give me the points anyway? And maybe they're right not to, maybe I really have been an arrogant brat or whatever and not obeyed the rules enough and now it's probably too late if I have!"  
  
He'd never spoken to her in any manner that was even remotely like this, not even on those few occasions when they had clashed; that was what truly alarmed her. "Calm down!" she yelled, in English, and grabbed him, half-shaking him. "Calm down. You are being frightened, you are being upset, you are being tired."  
  
"No, I'm being rational!" Brutally he wrenched himself free of her, he was nearly yelling now. "I do too little of being rational, especially lately, and with good reason, because when I'm rational, I suddenly realize I don't know why I'm spending my time breaking my body in an attempt to win things I'm never going to win because when I was looking the other way everyone went and became better than me...I could walk away right now! I could turn professional before my reputation goes down, skate in shows and never have to worry about a quad or a spin contortion again. I could earn enough money so that my brother could go to college! And I could," he paused, as if he was frightened to say what came next. "I could be with Stephane, because I love him, and I'm sick of denying it to myself!" That released the tears he'd been holding back for the past two hours.  
  
Galina gathered him back into her arms, held him like a child. She listened for footsteps outside the door, but the walls were mercifully thick. At most someone had just heard yelling, and Johnny raised his voice so little people might not recognize it, even unmuffled, when he did. "Then that is now known," she whispered. "And maybe it has hurt you, because you did not know it, and it vill not hurt anymore."  
  
"What about the fact that I hate this sport? That I hate what it did to him? How can I do this when I know what it really comes down to, that I've seen that with my own eyes?"  
  
"You do not hate sport," Galina insisted calmly. "You hate vhat it did to him, yes, but you do not hate it."  
  
"I just want to walk away. I don't know how I'm going to do Sunday. I think I should withdraw."  
  
"You will not withdraw," she told him in her sternest voice, pushing him back to face her. "You will go back to your hotel room, you will go straight to bed. You will wake up tomorrow and you will act as if this night never happened. You will think about your long program, you will think about what you will do in practice with it, you will approach it without concern for where you place."  
  
He looked at her sadly and shook his head. "I can't. There's no point in doing this if I can't at least get to Worlds."  
  
"You're only six points away from that," she tried to argue. "Skate a strong long program and you can easily make the distance up. It doesn't matter if you're not in the last group," she added, since she saw that objection coming, "You've got enough of a reputation they'll give you the points anyway. In fact, you may be only four points away, because it's the Worlds before the Olympics, and the federation might judge sending Pennington to be too much of a risk, and send him to Four Continents instead the way they did Katrina Hacker last year."  
  
"They like Kimmie. They don't like me."  
  
"Now you are being 'arrogant brat.'" On seeing his stunned looked, she continued, "You see things only how you are vanting to see them, you do not listen."  
  
He gave no response to that at all, not even a move of his eyes. "Go to bed," she finally said. He nodded limply and they walked out together, but when she tried to take his hand he slouched away from her, trying to put distance between them.  
  
There were still crowds outside the arena where she had failed to keep them close together, and they quickly got separated. Worried about what would happen if he suddenly decided to do who knew what, Galina started shoving her way through the crowd, "Johnny!" she called. "Johnnychik!"  
  
She had called his name for the fifth time when a hand touched her shoulder, and a woman's voice said, "Let him go. I saw him a minute or so ago; if I ever knew him at all, he's beyond your reach until at least tomorrow morning."  
  
Galina turned to face Priscilla Hill. Her first thought was that this was an awkward situation, her second that she didn't care. "You are sure?" she asked.  
  
"Dead certain." She had a sympathetic look in eye. Galina had no doubt she'd been here, and multiple times. "Want to talk about it? We could go for a drink."  
  
Galina nodded. It was a blow to her pride to admit to it, but she wanted some advice. Johnny's old coach had known him ten years. Even if she hadn't known what to do with him in the end, surely her insights could help. She briefly worried that Priscilla was now coaching one of Johnny's competitors, but if you looked at that situation you had to think it probably didn't matter.  
  
They went together to the hotel bar, and managed to get themselves with their drinks into a dark corner where they could gain some privacy, but at first she spoke in whispers as she explained about how the trouble had started with Stephane's injuries, and about how the season had become more and more of a long slough, and how Johnny, it seemed, had now completely lost heart. "I do not know vhat to do," she admitted. "I do not even know if he sleeps now. He probably still sit and cry."  
  
"Oh, not now," laughed Priscilla, very softly. "If he's just told you, like that, that he's in love with Stephane Lambiel, I'll bet you anything he went back to his hotel room to call Stephane Lambiel and tell the man himself. And if he's crying hard enough it might take awhile."  
  
"Stephane is good man," said Galina. "He vill tell Johnny go to sleep."  
  
"If he does that, then he probably will," said Priscilla. "He'll dose with a sleeping pill if necessary. So you don't have to worry about that. But about tomorrow, well, I don't know what you're going to do about that. You have to tread very carefully when Johnny's in love."  
  
"I know vhat I can do," said Galina. "I can order him to do vhat he needs to do in practice. I can make private practice and yell. But only if he vill let me do that, and I do not if he vill. And then..." she continued. "If he does not have Vorlds..."  
  
"Maybe that would be for the better," said Priscilla thoughtfully. "Honestly, in 2007? Going to Worlds did him no good. It might have just made the problem worse. Though you know, you are confusing me a little, because you talk about this competition as if it has no meaning to Johnny in itself. That's not like him."  
  
"Last year," explained Galina. "He thinks he not vin this, federation not let him. So he stop caring."  
  
"I thought he never watched Evan's performance."  
  
"He not, but he still think. And he think, okay, he vill just go to Vorlds. And now..." She made a futile gesture with her hands.  
  
"Then you need another plan," said Priscilla thoughtfully. "You know, back he began seriously training under me, he didn't think he could be an elite skater, because he'd started so late. What I did was I made it clear I expected him to pass this test and make this competition and do this jump and so on. You can't make it so he'll be afraid of failing, but you have to give him your expectations. That's what you need to do, starting tomorrow. Tell him what he has to do on Sunday. Don't argue with him about whether he can do it; he won't hear you that way. Impress on him that you expect him to do it, that you are simply that confident that he can. And if he doesn't make the World team, have a plan ready, focus it on the Olympics, or the season in general, but get as many specific details as possible, and tell him he's going to do it. Don't tell him he can do it, tell him he's going to."  
  
Galina remembered her early days with Johnny, when in fact they hadn't discussed results or accomplishments, but simply worked on getting back in shape. She remembered how he had jumped to her demands in a way that had genuinely surprised her. Now, perhaps, his reaction made sense. But still, one dark possibility remained, "And if he is refusing?"  
  
Priscilla shrugged. "In that case, I think it's time to let him go. You can't force this."  
  
The two women finished their drinks in silence. Galina felt better now, the sense of panic that had occupied her since her conversation with Johnny now past.  
  
"I should not be doing this, you know," Priscilla commented as she put down her empty glass. "I should definitely be asleep. I have a girl in the final tomorrow, and she's in an even worse position than Johnny. And if I've already gone this far..." She put her hand over Galina's and winked.  
  
She was only slightly drunk; Galina really wasn't at all. Even so, it took her a moment to realize Priscilla Hill was trying to seduce her. It took less time then that to decide that tonight, Galina wanted her to. She wasn't sure how to respond; she didn't get involved in this kind of thing very often, but she winked back and hoped that would work.  
  
From Priscilla's grin, she got the message. She leaned back in her chair and toyed with her purse. "So that'll be it for me tonight," she said, but her hands were moving under the table, and Galina was not at all surprised when, as Priscilla stood up and shook hands with her, she passed a crumpled piece of paper between them. "Good night," she said, in atrociously pronounced Russian.  
  
"Good night," Galina answered in turn, and watched her go. Noone else in the bar did; Galina supposed they were both too old to be of much interest to most of the people there.  
  
She lingered over her drink for a good ten minutes, mostly contemplating the future, and also wondering if Johnny had gone to sleep yet. It also occurred to her, now, that knowing them both, if Priscilla was right and he'd called Stephane and declared his love, they were probably going to be in some sort of relationship now, probably regardless of whether she liked it or not, which was yet another headache on top of a whole bunch of headaches that weren't going away no matter what happened on Sunday. This was why she'd never had sex much, except, of course, when she'd been married, to a man who'd belonged safely to the world outside skating, and by then she'd been coaching anyway. Since losing Nikolai, she could count her lovers on one hand, and the same was true for the number of women she'd had sex with throughout her life. The last of those had been before her marriage. Before tonight, she'd thought it something she wasn't very likely to do again.  
  
She checked the room number before leaving the bar, an action that made her stomach jump a little in anticipation. Not that her outward demeanor changed at all, not through the bar and hotel lobby and all through the elevator ride. Thankfully the corridor was deserted when she got to the floor-though when she checked her watch, that could hardly be a surprise.   
  
She knocked, and Priscilla answered. She stepped half-way in, so Priscilla couldn't close the door yet, and asked. "Vhy? I do think this strange. Vhy me?"  
  
Priscilla gestured for her to move out of the way, and she did. When the door was closed, Priscilla answered. "Because I like your eyes. Because it's been a stressful week for both of us-do you know on top of everything else, my Austrian boy didn't make the free at Europeans? Of course I couldn't be there, but I spent two hours on the phone with him. Because you have two World and Olympic Champions-and you just might make a third where I couldn't."  
  
There was a trace of resentment there, no doubt about it. But it was only a trace, easily understandable, easily forgivable, easily forgettable.  
  
Something about the way she kissed reminded Galina of Nikolai. Perhaps it was the smooth flow of it, the way she seamlessly transitioned from a touch of the lips to her tongue in Galina's mouth, from her hands on her cheeks to unbuttoning her coat, to taking Galina's hands and placing them on her body.  
  
Priscilla was younger than Galina by a number of years-Galina wasn't sure exactly how many-but she was still far older than those women Galina had once been with. It felt strange to touch skin that was like her own, bones-Galina knew Priscilla had dealt with a long-term injury during her skating career, one that had dashed her hopes of making the Olympics, but she didn't know which part of her body. She ran her hands along Priscilla's hips and her fingers only dared ghost the skin.  
  
Neither undressed entirely, though Priscilla took off more, even ceremoniously sliding her underwear down her stockinged legs and kicking them into the corner with a flourish. She pulled at Galina's clothes and looked disappointed when Galina balked at taking so many of them off, but she didn't push it, instead sliding her hands into and under cloth. She was more experienced at this; she did things with her fingers that made Galina's body arch with pleasure, and guided Galina's hands when the older woman was unsure. The old memories came back, and the not-so-old memories also kicked in, of her doing this to her own body, doing for herself what she chose not to have anyone else, then, do for her. She recalled the faces of those girls best she could, though they had faded and run together in her memory, and they all flew far away when they were replaced by the face of Priscilla, mouth open with ecstasy as her body shook in what was unmistakably orgasm.  
  
"Relax," she whispered as they kissed afterwards, and she grew aggressive, hands and mouth seizing and pressing, taking control completely, forcing tiny noises from Galina's throat as the pleasure started to grow unbearable. When the first soft, full moan broke out of the older woman, she heard Priscilla laugh in triumph and felt her go faster. Her body twitched and trembled, she pulled Priscilla's head up for more kisses, she forgot everything except those kisses and that laughter and those  _hands._  
  
She hadn't climaxed like this in a long time, like she could feel it in her entire body, like it made her shoulders spasm. For several glorious seconds the last of her worries were driven from her as Priscilla continued to move, wringing the last of the pleasure out of her.  
  
Then her hips felt sore, her stomach felt odd, and she desperately needed to pee. She shifted her head around, whispered, "Toilet?" Priscilla helped her up and pointed.  
  
She went herself after Galina had finished, while the latter put her clothes back on and lay back on on the bed, suddenly deathly tired.  
  
"Hey, you're not going to fall asleep on me here, are you?" Galina forced herself back up as Priscilla emerged, now in her bathrobe. "Want some water?"  
  
"Yes, thank you." Water revived her, then Priscilla helped her wash her fact and brush her hair a little. Her lips were still swollen; they were a strange sight to her in the mirror.  
  
Priscilla stood behind her and kissed the edge of her hair. Galina could see her broad smile. "If you need any further advice," she said, "or anything else, for that matter, feel free to come see me again."


End file.
